WORD LISTS

Vocabulary from Maya Angelou's On The Pulse of Morning

Maya Angelou died on May 28, 2014. Best known for her autobiography,
I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, Angelou was also a supremely accomplished poet. The list below is drawn from perhaps her most famous poem, "On the Pulse of Morning" which she read at President Clinton's first inaugural, in 1993.

A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since departed,
Marked the mastodon,
The dinosaur, who left dried tokens
Of their
sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.

A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since departed,
Marked the mastodon,
The dinosaur, who left dried tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their
hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.

Here, on the pulse of this new day
You may have the
grace to look up and out
And into your sister's eyes, and into
Your brother's face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope --
Good morning.